I then bade the woman sit down by the ingle cheek, and our wife to give her a piece of cold beef, and a shave of bread, besides twopence out of my own pocket. Some, on hearing siccan sums mentioned, would have immediately struck work, but, even in the height of my grand expectations, I did not forget the old saying, that "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush;" and being thrang with a pair of leggins for Eben Bowsie, I brushed away ben to the workshop, thinking the woman, or witch, or whatever she was, would have more freedom and pleasure in eating by herself.--That she had, I am now bound to say by experience. Two days after, when we were sitting at our comfortable four-hours, in came little Benjie, running out of breath--just at the individual moment of time my wife and me were jeering one another, about how we would behave when we came to be grand ladies and gentlemen, keeping a flunkie maybe--to tell us, that when he was playing at the bools, on the plainstones before the old kirk, he had seen the deaf and dumb spaewife harled away to the tolbooth, for stealing a pair of trowsers that were hanging drying on a tow in Juden Elshinder's back close. I could scarcely credit the callant, though I knew he would not tell a lie for sixpence; and I said to him, "Now be sure, Benjie, before ye speak. The tongue is a dangerous weapon, and apt to bring folk into trouble--it might be another woman." It was real cleverality in the callant. He said, "Ay, faither, but it was her; and she contrived to bring herself into trouble without a tongue at a'." I could not help laughing at this, it showed Benjie to be such a genius; so he said, "Ye needna laugh, faither; for it's as true's death it was her. Do you think I didna ken in a minute our cheese-toaster, that used to hing beside the kitchen fire; and that the sherry-offisher took out frae beneath her grey cloak?" The smile went off Nanse's cheek like lightning, and she said it could not be true; but she would go to the kitchen to see. I'fegs it was too true; for she never came back to tell the contrary. This was really and truly a terrible business, but the truth for all that; the cheese-toaster casting up not an hour after, in the hands of Daniel Search, to whom I gave a dram. The loss of the tin cheese-toaster would have been a trifle, especially as it was broken in the handle--but this was an awful blow to the truth of the thieving dumbie's grand prophecy. Nevertheless, it seemed at the time gey puzzling to me, to think how a deaf and dumb woman, unless she had some wonderful gift, could have told us what she did.